We left Bespin within the hour and were home by nightfall, though Kylo was pulled into briefing with Trugden and was still with him when I went to sleep in my room.

He was still asleep when I went down for breakfast the next day, and considering how I'd woken him the day before, I just let him be. I was in the library when I felt the dark trickle of power and quickly shoved the book I was reading under the cushion.

Kylo looked at me, then to the book I'd poorly hidden. "Why are you being weird?"

"I'm not."

"Then why are you sitting on the romance novel that you were just reading?"

I didn't want to tell him that I was reading it to know what married couples really did, since I'd been told so little, and the information that I had been given was false."Did you need something?"

Thank the maker above, he dropped it. "Yes, actually. To tell you that I'm leaving."

"We literally just got back."

"Apparently, there is some sort of…" he waved his hand in indifference. "Thing on Kessel, and I have to go."

I frowned. "By yourself?"

"Afraid so. The Knights will be here."

So, even his Knights weren't going. "When will you be back?"

He shrugged. "A few days."

"A few days of your Knights unattended, who knows what you'll come home to."

He gave me a lopsided grin. "I don't care what I come home to. As long as it's you." A blush blazed across my face and ears.

His eyes went to the cushion under me, then he turned toward the door.

I wasn't expecting the hollow ache that settled in my chest as I watched him walk away. I hadn't expected any of the feelings that I had around him, for him. My mind kept going back to being in the antechamber of his mind, hearing him think about how easy it was to laugh and play and flirt with me. It made me realize how easy it was to laugh and play and flirt with him. He'd found it to be confusing and terrifying, and while it was definitely both of those things, it was also exciting and...wonderful.

I spent the next few hours reading until my growling stomach had me heading toward the kitchen, where I found Ap'lek, eating a pasta dish of some kind. He didn't look up at me when I sat down and asked the servant for whatever he had, and a glass of white wine.

I had to admit, it was refreshing to order a drink and not see any accusatory glances. It had been nearly ten weeks since the wedding, and I wasn't with child. Of course no one knew the real reason I wasn't pregnant yet, and could never be told.

"Do you know what will happen?" Ap'lek asked. "If you and Kylo continue to play your little game?"

My brow furrowed. "What game?"

Then, I heard his voice inside my head, though he didn't speak. 'Of him not bedding you.'

I gasped. "How did you-?"

"The Force has blessed me with many abilities." He rubbed his temple with his finger tips. "Your unshielded mind is practically screaming at me."

I remembered the night I met Aplek, when I thought he and Kylo were communicating somehow. "Kylo has that ability too, doesn't he?"

He nodded. "His ability is much greater than mine."

"So, he can hear what I think?" And, he'd never said anything.

"Out of respect for you and your privacy, he makes it a point not to listen to you. He easily could, he just chooses not to." He rolled his eyes.

I squared my shoulders. "Well, I don't see how what goes on in our marriage bed is any of your concern."

"If anyone, and I mean anyone were to find out what doesn't go on in your marriage bed, Kylo will be forced to do exactly what the twisted women who groomed you told you he would do."

Dread gripped my heart and I shook my head. "He wouldn't."

"He'd have to. The officials and the priest would see that the act was done, either by having you examined by a physician after, or by watching themselves. And, as sick as those bastards are, I'd put my money on the latter."

I shuddered.

"If you're not pregnant soon, as in a few months soon, the officials will assume that you're barren and send you back to Naboo. And, do you know what will happen then?'

I shook my head.

"Your contract will be voided, your marriage will be annulled and another virgin will be bought for him."

Kylo would marry someone else? I shook my head. "He wouldn't let that happen."

"The officials ensure that the King does what is in the best interest of the Kingdom. They have the authority to do whatever is necessary to secure the royal line, and they, as well as the priest, are shielded against his power. So, even though he is who he is, what he is, you were still bought just to give him an heir."

"He didn't want to be married to me?"

He shrugged. "I can't say now, but I know he didn't, he thinks the entire practice is disgusting. Which, it absolutely is, and he's working as Supreme Leader to have it outlawed. But, it's a century's old practice, and instead of the officials listening to him, or respecting his wishes at all, they forced him to marry you." He said, a bit souly. "I've known him for nearly twenty years and I've seen him kill an enemy on the battlefield and then puke his guts up. I've seen him mourn the men he was ordered to kill. I was there the day he ascended the throne, and since that day, I haven't seen him smile, or laugh. I haven't seen him happy. Until he married you."

I laughed once. "You make it sound like he loves me."

He raised an eyebrow. "He does."

"He told me he's not the type of man who falls in love."

"Yeah, and that's fucking bullshit." Aplek said. "He's never been in love, and he thinks that if he ignores what he feels for you, those feelings will just go away like magic or some shit. He thinks that if he admits that he loves you, you can be used against him, and ultimately taken from him."

"Why?"

Ap'lek frowned, looking down. "Because the only person he's ever loved was used to manipulate him for years, and then slaughtered in front of him."

"Who?"

Ap'lek's frown deepened. "His mother."

I remembered the Knights talking about Kylo's mother, but he hadn't mentioned her since. "What happened?"

"I don't know, I wasn't there, and you'll be better off not asking Kylo about it because he's only ever spoken of it once, right after we found him, and has refused since."

"Found him?"

His pale eyes were clouded as he stared at nothing, remembering, then he extended a hand to me, offering to show me. I reached for it, but he said, "Make sure this is something that you want to see."

Wanted? I wasn't sure I wanted to see, but I had to know. I took a steadying breath, grabbed his hand, and was thrown into his memories.

He was on watch out, pacing along his patch of border, and he'd felt the ripple in the Force. Not just a pulse of power, a churning tidal wave of destruction, of death, of anguish, and his stomach bottomed out. Because in his mind, through their connection, was Kylo, and he was screaming. Screaming as if his soul was being shredded.

He broke out into a full sprint toward the source, the throne room, and skidded to a stop when he turned the corner, his mind unable to forget what his eyes saw, even now. Kylo was thirty yards away, curled up on his side, in the middle of a clear circle, and he was sobbing, screaming, some blood curdling combination of both. And, in those thirty yards, where a building of wood and glass and stone had been, was ash. Ash without the slightest whisper that anything else had ever been there.

Ap'lek spotted Vicrul on his left, looking around him with wide, horrified eyes. Looking at what remained of the people caught in the Force blast, the ground littered with limbs and pulp and shards of bone. Kylo, he'd ripped them apart. He'd ripped everything apart. And, with each scream, the circle grew, disintegrating everything it touched into sparkling black ash.

"Shield!" He yelled to Vicrul, putting one around himself.

He continued to stare, his face white as death.

"Vicrul!" Ap'lek yelled, and Vicrul blinked, looking up at him. "We have to stop him! He's going to destroy this entire planet if we don't!"

Trugden ran to his side, stopping when he saw the carnage.

"Go and get Ushar." Ap'lek commanded. Trugden was one of the weakest of the six in the Force. He couldn't go in there, he couldn't shield. But, Trugden, like Vicrul, had been frozen in terror. Aplek grabbed a fistful of his tunic, and shook him. When Trugden's eyes went to him, Ap'lek shoved him back. "Go and get Ushar!" He didn't look to see if Trugden obeyed, gritting his teeth as he moved forward, toward Kylo.

The waves of the Force were excruciating, tearing at his shield, his clothing, his skin. But also at his soul, his heart, giving Ap'lek the want to crumple onto the ground and beg for death. The anger, the guilt, the incapacitating grief, it was everywhere, as if the waves were made of it, and not the Force.

He reached Kylo first, screaming his name again and again, to no avail. Vicrul was there, screaming as well, but it was Ushar, with whatever he'd been trained in as a Shadow guard, that had stopped the waves, but left Kylo as a heap of hysterical sobs.

Ap'lek stood, looking around at the destruction, what remained of the palace crumbling around him, the moans and groans of the wounded at last reaching his ears.

I was tugged back into the present when Aplek took his hand back. Tears were streaming down my face, and I didn't even care to wipe them away. "What did he do?"

"He doesn't remember." Aplek said, his gravelly voice low. "He remembers being summoned to the throne room. Snoke found out that Leia had started a rebellion against him, and had been having an affair with a pirate named….something Solo. Kylo got between them and shielded his mother. Snoke, he'd always known that Leia was Kylo's weakness, his only weakness, and he exploited it mercilessly. That's why he didn't divorce her, or take another wife after Kylo was born, because Kylo didn't give two shits or a rat's ass what Snoke did to him, but he cared about what Snoke did to Leia. Kylo was stronger than Snoke, and Snoke knew it, and when Kylo got between him and Leia, he killed her. I don't know why. I don't know how, something about force lightning holding him down and then when he saw her eyes unfocus, he lost it. But, that's all I've ever been able to get out of him."

"Is that why everyone is afraid of him?"

He gave me a deadpan look. "He literally disintegrated his predecessor, who until then, was the most powerful Supreme Leader in history, and everything and everyone else in a hundred foot radius."

Sure, that amount of power, that ability was terrifying. "But, that was him not being able to control his power. It wasn't malicious."

He shrugged. "No one knows what set him off, so they're afraid to get his coffee wrong, else they might be turned to dust. It doesn't help that Snoke used him to do his dirty work for years. Him and Ushar both. That's where his reputation comes from, what he's known for. Why he has a...less than favorable opinion of himself."

"Why are you telling me all of this?" It's not that I wasn't grateful, it was just a lot to take in.

"Because no one else would, and it's bullshit. You're his wife for fucks sake, and I pledged my fealty to you. And, fealty, to me, means telling you when you're playing with fire." His gaze locked with mine. "Which you are."

"What, exactly, are you suggesting?"

"I'm not suggesting anything." He said, showing me his palms. "But, on Bespin, he gave you a way away from him, and no one would have blamed you for taking it. No one. Not even Kylo. You didn't take it. You chose to stay with him. But staying with him means fulfilling your contractual obligations. Because if you don't, they'll make you, which would absolutely obliterate the both of you, or they'll send you back to Naboo and buy someone else."

"And, if I don't want to fulfill my contractual obligations?" I asked, my voice quaking.

"If this isn't what you want, I'll get you off of Mustafar tonight."

"What about Kylo?"

He sucked on his teeth. "It would fucking destroy Kylo. But, he'd rather you destroy him, than stay where you don't want to be and destroy yourself."

I frowned. "I am getting really sick of everyone trying to talk me into leaving him."

"I would never." He shook his head. "That's not what this is. Kylo is my brother, he's my best friend, and he is my king, and I would never."

The servant brought my dinner and wine, and sat it in front of me.

"Then what is this, Ap'lek?" I pushed the flood away, and took a long drink from my glass.

"The truth." He said, a tinge of regret in his voice.